Tivos, DVRs and Timeshifted viewing – Oh my!
By Susan Cregan
So, the audience watching timeshifted tv has increased by 36% from the previous year. Locally, 26% of Rochesterarians have DVRs. That means more and more people are able to fast forward through your commercials that were so lovingly created. How can we be sure that people are actually seeing the commercials and not flying through them?
It is important to look at your media buy and see where you may lose the eyeballs. Are you running in highly DVRd shows such as Lost, The Office or Heroes? On average more that 20% of their viewers are watching it on their DVR. If you are buying a lot of news and sports, your commercials are pretty safe. Look at purchasing the first spot in or last spot out of break, or you may consider buying spots online before news stories to support your campaign. Yes, it’s annoying to sit through a commercial online, but I’ll take forced viewership over fast forwarded viewership any day. Now is the time for media people to show their creativity.
Of course as media people, we all complain about the DVRs and Hulu.com taking away our “Must See TV” but I’ll tell you a secret…I don’t know any person in media that doesn’t use their DVR. Obsessively. I don’t think I have watched a show at the programmed time in 6 years. Buffy, how I miss you.
March 7th, 2009 at 7:21 am
I watch all my shows via Netflix – another way to miss the spots, but doesn’t get captured in the DVR numbers. Btw, have a feeling that getting DVDs mailed to me is going to feel really dated any day now.
March 10th, 2009 at 10:10 pm
Sue, I’m with you. There’s no way we’d be able to watch any shows we like if we didn’t DVR them. Shows are on either too early, too late, 0r at a too-inconvenient time – the 3-child effect!
An interesting thing that we’ve found, though – we’ll DVR TV shows and watch them within a few days of recording. But if we DVR a movie, or something longer than 1 1/2 hours? It’s a struggle to even start to watch the recording. It’s like we’re cool because No Country for Old Men is on our DVR…and it sits there, never to be viewed.